`As The Disk Turns': IBM, Apple And Microsoft's Chip Opera
It was the hottest-selling T-shirt at the Macworld Expo last January in San Francisco.
The front showed the familiar rainbow-striped Apple Computer Inc. logo - an apple with a "byte" out of the middle - above the legend, "This is your brain."
The back showed the stodgy blue IBM logo. Printed below were the words, "This is your brain on drugs."
Although it made its point humorously, the T-shirt nevertheless reflected traditional "Apple-centric" antipathy toward "Big Blue." Apple was smart, alert, fun. IBM was slow, plodding, brain-fried. The twain could never meet.
So when IBM and Apple announced their historic accord last week to co-develop a new generation of PC technology, it was as though the U.S. and Soviet Union had signed a joint disarmament treaty (one wag even called it the end of the Code War). It didn't stop Macintosh partisans from caviling about the death of the dream: One gallows joke circulating the industry was, "What do you get when you cross Apple with IBM? Answer: IBM."
IBMers had their own riposte: "What does IBM stand for? I've Been Mac-ed!"
Although analysts downplayed the event's significance for users in the short term, pointing out that it will be two to three years at the earliest before chip and software design elements fall into place, the Apple-IBM agreement does signal a shift in the PC universe. But the accord is more a symptom than a cause of the shift, and it is far from being the only factor driving the change.
What the agreement signals is the end of what might be called the religious experience for PC users. Ever since they were introduced, computers have represented as much a toy as a tool, an object of joy and affection as well as productivity.
Apple and IBM, representing the primary choices, have fed the fever by providing disparate computing environments. You were either a Mac person or an IBM person and could defend with your life the advantages of either.
But the distinctions in PCs are diminishing. Macintoshes, once cute little upright boxes, look a lot like IBM clones today. Microsoft Windows looks a lot like the Macintosh's operating system. Personal computing is becoming generic-ized: The strength of the graphical-user interface - standardized commands for ease of learning and use - is also its weakness in terms of personality and flavor. You seen one, you seen 'em all.
At the same time that IBM and Apple were announcing their agreement, Microsoft disclosed that sales of Windows reached the 6 million mark. Projected into the future at its current rate, Windows will be on 20 million to 30 million computers by the time the Apple-IBM agreement bears marketable fruit - assuming its optimistic goals are met.
Windows by then may be on even more computers, in fact, if planned upgrades this year and next accelerate sales beyond current rates.
This installed base will pose problems for the Apple-IBM effort. Indications are that the Apple-IBM technology will ask users to "leapfrog" - that is, abandon their old software and hardware in favor of a new system so powerful, easy to use and life-enhancing that the PC faithful will clamber over one another to get at it.
It could happen. The IBM-Apple dream machine, as envisioned, will combine all of today's disparate PC elements under one hood: Object-oriented software making programming as easy as driving a car; multimedia computing blending the elements of television and PCs together in a user-customizable package; and plug-and-play networking allowing computers to be hooked together as easily as today's telephones.
But will it happen without Windows?
Microsoft is involved in its own efforts to create a dream machine - one running Windows, of course. Windows NT (for "new technology," the phrase that not-so-coincidentally kept popping up during the IBM-Apple announcement) will provide the instant networking capability, Windows Multimedia Extensions will enable sound, animation and other TV-like features, and object-orientation already is becoming a key advantage to programming in Windows.
Microsoft also is a key partner in the Advanced Computing Environment, a consortium of several hardware and software companies that hopes to take advantage of new chip technologies for a super PC. ACE, as it is called, is impressive largely because of Microsoft's presence, however, and represents nowhere near the market clout in hardware of IBM and Apple.
To a certain degree, the coalitions represent political posturing on the part of major players greedy for continued market share. IBM and Apple are both wary of Microsoft's growing domination, which Microsoft is doing all it can to promulgate and protect.
Can the IBM-Apple consortium market its dream machine without accommodating millions of Windows users? Can Microsoft market Windows without a big-name "box" manufacturer like IBM or Apple? Or will these major players ultimately need one another more than they at present care to admit?
It's not a soap opera, it's a chip opera. Stay tuned to that multimedia box for the next episode of "As the Disk Turns."
NEWS BYTES
Redmond's Symbologic Corp. will show off its innovative expert systems software for Windows, Adept 2.0, at the Northwest Artificial Intelligence Forum tomorrow, with social hour beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the College Club, 505 Madison. . . . Truth in Journalism: "Readers often assume that Macworld vouches for the quality of a mail-order or direct-sales company by allowing its advertisements to be published, but that's not the case." Kudos to Macworld's consumer expert Deborah Branscum for this full disclosure in the November issue. Of course, the same applies to other publications as well.
TIP OF THE WEEK
Reader Bob Adams of Seattle swears this works: Use a piece of Bounce fabric softener to clean the screen of your monitor (after running it in the dryer, since the heat activates the fabric). Using the sheet helps neutralize the static charge on the screen, keeping it from attracting more dust. Contact this column in care of The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle 98111. Paul Andrews can be reached at CompuServe 76050,161 or via fax at 382-8879.
User Friendly appears Tuesdays in The Seattle Times. Paul Andrews is a member of The Times staff.